Monday, February 09, 2009

Too much show, too little tell

Last year I saw the movie Stardust, and I can't emphasise too much how awesome it was. The film was adapted from a book of the same name by Neil Gaiman, though the scripting was done by the movie director. How disappointing, then, after my enjoying the film of the book so much, to pick up the novel and find it was just the book of the film.

I checked on Wikipedia last night (as I was halfway through the book) and found that it was originally written as an illustrated novel. My copy doesn't have the illustrations, but is otherwise the same. The chapters are made up, not so much of words and paragraphs, as of images and jump cuts. Gaiman will set the scene up for one character, jump to another scene in which an event is taking place for another character, jump to a third place to introduce a third character, before maybe returning to one of his two previously introduced characters. Anybody's whose read a popular novelisation of a film or a television series will recognise this technique - it's interesting, although the great trouble with it is that it lacks the precise timing of film.

As for the images, Gaiman sets them up brilliantly. The trouble is that he doesn't often describe them, which you have to do in a novel - it can't just show them like a film or a comic book. He ends chapters with cliffhangers, but the cliffhangers are almost entirely visual - for instance, in one chapter ending he plonks two of his characters in the middle of the sky. But his description is almost pointless, a mere succession of words - 'looking down on the hills and trees and rivers far below them.' There's nothing there to tell us what it feels like, and he doesn't have his characters show any signs of fear. It's a great scenario for artists or actors to flesh out; but as a novelist, Gaiman has only done half the work.

All of which is to say that as a novelist Gaiman seems to suffer from a surfeit of show and not tell. You have to tell in a novel; it's all you've got. Novelists spend a lot of time explaining to, and even arguing with, the characters and the audience - that's part of the fun. It also lets them get away with lots of things that film or comic writers are not able to get away with - to both reflect on events from a distance, and to enter into the heads of their characters and let them explain and debate about their own life. In this book, at least, Gaiman doesn't do any of that.

And there's very little wit, either, which most novelists should have to some degree. The set ups are brilliantly dramatic, but the dialogue is never very interesting in itself. Even those situations where the use of word play is obvious, Gaiman avoids it. The closest he gets to it is the scene where Yvaine (a main character, originally a star (don't ask)) falls to earth and swears, which is kind of cute, but not particularly witty. You can almost see the speech bubble forming out of Yvaine's mouth as she says the words.

Is Gaiman always this bad? Is he only good as a comic-book author or scriptwriter? I'd be interested in hearing from readers who've looked through his other books.

14 comments:

Maria
said...

Hi TimT!

I haven't read a host of Gaiman's work.(sorry)

However I DID read AND watch Stardust, and so did Mr Coffee. Mr Coffee actually preferred some parts of the book over the movie - for instance the bit about two Mondays in a week (which wasn't in the movie) and he preferred the use of the transporting candle and the description of it in the book.

I didn't think the book was that bad and I did think the "two Mondays" thing was clever. However I have to agree that the movie was far more engaging - one of the few times I'll say that about a movie over the book. I just felt it did everything right - it was colourful, nicely paced and the actors came out beautifully on screen as did the scenery - something the book lacked.

I also liked the crossdressing sea-man in the movie - that was good!

I found Stardust to be an easy simple read, I read it and understood why someone would think "this makes for a great movie" - but I think the movie did a better job of really getting the imagination to work. Besides ... the Star was so much more gorgeous and Victoria so much more bitchy in the movie ...

I love Good Omens, which Gaiman co-wrote with Terry Pratchett (it'd be pretty hard to co-write a bad book with Terry Pratchett) and the Sandman comics I've read are good, occasionally very good. Other than that I've never really liked Gaiman's stuff - it's full of good ideas but I find his writing dull. Perhaps it's the lack of a visual element, as your post suggests. That would explain why it works better when adapted to film, or in conjunction with illustrations.

Cross-dressing pirates, now comments that cross... thanks Tim. I also suspect that Gaiman writes quickly and doesn't bother rewriting or adding too many details - he just provides a simple template for other artists to work with. (Pratchett, artist for the Sandman comics, film directors, etc.)

Tim, I totally agree with you on Gaiman. He's much better as a writer of graphic novels, or in tandem with Terry Pratchett (Good Omens is awesome). I think Neverwhere is better than Stardust as a novel, but again, it's a bit like a screenplay (not surprising because it started off as one).